Time Is An Illusion, Lunchtime, Doubly So
by Mistress Scribbles
Summary: Set after 'The End'. Matters would be much easier for Ben Linus if he weren't trying to juggle an existential crisis and his first real romance. Some sexual content - not particularly graphic. Dr Linus/"Sideways" Rousseau, and lots of cameos!
1. Chapter 1

_A/N - Erk. Yes folks, midway through many other projects I got completely sidetracked by the emotional trauma that was the end of Lost. And since a, Benry is swiftly becoming one of my favourite characters of all time_,_ b, I've always shipped him with Danielle, especially in Sidewaysville so 'What They Died For' was very exciting for me and c, Benji's ending was left more open than other characters', I felt an pressing need to get this story of Benry in the afterlife down, even though it means dipping a writery toe into the biggest fandom yet. Hope you enjoy it! _

TIME IS AN ILLUSION - LUNCHTIME, DOUBLY SO.

-x-

One

-x-

I was sitting in a cafeteria when I realised that I was dead. A morbidly obese man with a loud shirt and a soft smile brought me a coffee and a candy bar, sat down and took my hand. Memories that had been playing hazily about the edges of my psyche since the time that I'd had, in his words, "my tweedy ass handed to me in the parking lot" became in an instant as clear and perfect as if they had been captured on film and played back to me on some magical projector in my mind's eye. And what a slideshow. Definitely R-rated, but for all the wrong reasons. I recalled my death – the stroke that I had suffered aged 73, which had left me mute, paralysed down my left side, leaking copiously from pretty much every orifice and utterly bewildered. Mercifully, it had only taken eight hours for the second stroke to finish me off. Still, it had been anything but a heroic death – not even a particularly dignified one. No more dignified was my reaction in the cafeteria to seeing these visions. I broke down and noisily, messily wept. As I sobbed, the man who had brought me the conciliatory coffee stayed with me. He held and comforted me as he had done for the eight hours it had taken me to die in his arms. He didn't shed as many tears this time around – although, to be fair, I was crying enough for both of us. I didn't need to tell him that it wasn't my death that had upset me so – I had died an old man, at home, in the embrace of the one person who I had been able to love purely, without selfishness or covetousness or the desire to manipulate or control – my best friend, my boss, my superior in every way. We all have to die, and to die in the caring arms of Hugo Reyes had been a far better death than I'd deserved. I wasn't crying because of how I'd died. I was crying because of how I'd lived – before I was helped to change. I am, and have always been, a compulsive liar by nature, and even after spending the last three decades of my life trying to alter that, it seemed that even in death I had told one final lie. I had told myself that I had always been a good person – a person without blame. Hugo showed me in the cafeteria that this was very far from the truth.

I have no way of knowing how long it took me to regain anything akin to a sense of composure, but I remember that after I had cried myself out, my coffee was still piping hot. As I drank, Hugo apologised for the upset his revelations had caused. He told me that Desmond Hume had been in two minds as to whether to help me become aware, but that he had persuaded Desmond that, from the way that I'd lived out my last 30 years, I might be ready to move on in death early, along with the crash survivors that he was collecting. It was pretty obvious from my reaction that I wasn't ready at all. My later years under Hugo's caring wing had been a step in the right direction, but nowhere near the debt I felt was due for all the lives I'd ruined, all the lives I'd taken, all the lives I'd manipulated others into taking for me. Hugo made several more attempts to persuade me, which was sweet of him, but I think that by that point he was just paying lip service. My mind was made up. I hope he wasn't worried about missing me. I'm sure he won't really. What does it matter if I take a while longer to join him again? What does the passage of time even mean in this place? Maybe he was more worried about me missing him. I did miss him. I still do. But I knew I had to wait. There are things that I needed to do. Only trouble was, I didn't have faintest idea what those things were.

I waited. I sat outside the church, and I thought, and I waited. Sometimes I saw people in the distance who seemed to be walking towards the church, only to stop and turn away. It seemed that I was far from alone in my trepidation. One tall, dark figure came towards the church, faltered for a moment, then kept on coming. He only stopped when he had come all but a few feet from my bench. He nodded to me in greeting.

'Hello, Mr Eko.'

Taciturn as ever, Eko nodded at the church. 'Are you going in?'

'Not for a while. Are you?'

'No. I am going to another place. It is a good place. My brother is there. I just wanted to tell them… you _are_ going in eventually?'

'I hope so. Maybe.'

'If you do…'

'I'll let them know.'

Eko turned, and walked away. I watched him go.

'Are you taking messages, Ben?'

I have to admit – dead though I am, my nerves are still tested by people I wasn't aware of suddenly asking questions from over my shoulder. I started a little and turned to see a man – around 90 years of age, with weather worn olive skin, a shock of snow white hair and the most carefree smile I think I've ever seen. For a moment, I thought that I didn't recognise him. I searched his eyes and blinked.

'Richard?'

'I've got somewhere else to go too,' Richard explained. 'I just wanted to show them…' He indicated to his face.

'You got old.'

Richard nodded, proudly.

'I'm afraid I don't have a camera, Richard. They won't be able to see for themselves.'

'Just tell them,' Richard replied, and hobbled off.

Eko was with his brother, Richard got old… if anyone else showed up with messages for the others, I was going to have to start writing things down. I watched down the road as another figure lingered in the distance, apparently unsure as to whether to approach. I was so intent at watching the far-off figure that I barely noticed the car as it pulled up until the engine stopped and the door opened. My attention finally grabbed by the car, I looked up just in time to see the passenger getting out. He had his back to me still. A shaven head, a sharp, expensive pinstripe suit… how long I'd been sitting on that bench for was beyond me, but I knew that I couldn't stay there a moment longer. I was happy to make my peace with John Locke and Jack Shepherd, and to take messages from the likes of Eko and Alpert, but there were some faces still in this world that I couldn't bring myself to confront. Perhaps, a part of me told myself, if I could confront them, I might be able to go into the church. My legs evidently didn't listen to that little voice, however, since I found myself jumping to my feet and running away as fast as I possibly could, as though automatically. I ran from the church and rounded a corner… and in the process practically collided with somebody else that I'd been trying to avoid. It's a small underworld after all, I guess.

'Ben?' Danielle Rousseau put a hand on my shoulder. She seemed happy to see me and terribly worried at the same time. 'What's wrong? What are you running away from?' A look of horror crossed her face as she gazed behind me, scouring the street for an assailant. 'It's not that terrible man again, is it – the one who beat you?'

'No,' I replied. 'No, don't you worry about him any more. I'm fine. I'm just… something spooked me. It's stupid. I'm sorry.'

Rousseau nodded, the troubled look not leaving her eye. 'I've been trying to get hold of you. I haven't been able to find you anywhere.' Her expression softened. Before Hugo Reyes got me coffee, that smile would have made my heart fill with hope. Now, it just dismayed me. 'I thought that perhaps, after our lovely dinner the other night… Alex is away tomorrow. Maybe we could have lunch? Just the two of us?'

Again, had she asked me before Hugo opened my eyes to my own personal home movies from Hell, I would have cheerfully accepted. Now, because if there's any way to make "I'm sorry, I can't because I've recently remembered that not only are we all dead, but I also snatched your baby daughter – the only thing you had left in the world – from you, raising her as my own, trying to control her life well into her teens, never allowing you to see her, leaving you a hollow, crazed feral jungle woman and eventually managing to get both of you killed, and every time I think about how happy you both might have been without me I'm filled with shame" sound in the slightest bit sane or believable, I certainly haven't thought of one, I just cast my eyes away and lamely muttered 'I'm sorry. It isn't you… It's me…'

Throughout both my life and my afterlife I have been many things, but a competent veteran of the Dating Game was never one of them. It took me a moment to judge by her crushed expression that she understood "It's not you, it's me" as code for "It definitely _is_ you, aren't you just the biggest idiot for asking?" So help me, I panicked a little. I'd spent 16 years of life hurting that woman. I couldn't bear to hurt her any more.

'You're too good for me,' I added. 'You and Alex. You don't want to get involved with me. I've hurt people, in the past. To say I was the jealous type would be an understatement.'

'We all have baggage at our age,' smiled Rousseau. Damn it, that smile again. How dare I have extinguished that smile? 'You think I'm perfect? I've been taking anti depressants on and off since Alex's father died. For a short while soon after I lost him, I went completely mad.'

'Why are you telling me this?'

'Do you see a madwoman when you look at me?'

'No,' I answered, keeping the addendum "_not any more"_ to myself.

'And I don't see a bad person when I look at you,' Rousseau replied. 'I see a lonely man. _Are_ you lonely, Dr Linus?'

For the love of God, I'd started crying again. I managed to rub the stray tears away quickly, but not fast enough to elude her attention.

'You have no idea,' I told her.

'Yes, I do.'

She grabbed my lapels, pulled me sharply into her and kissed me. I lived for 73 years, and never in any of those years did anybody kiss me the way that she did then. Perhaps, if someone had, things might have turned out differently. Perhaps, but probably not. Strange how a dead man can be made to feel so alive. I felt the rush of blood and hormones racing through my heart… and other areas. I didn't exactly want the moment to go on forever, but I certainly wanted it to go on for a long time. I wanted to find out where my hands, which had buried themselves in her hair, and now started moving down her back, were going to end up. _Her_ hands were moving in some interesting directions, too, and I was quite happy to allow them to wander as they wished.

Suddenly, she pulled away with an expression of horrified realisation.

The look in her eyes hit me like a bucket of cold water. Hugo had said that he had remembered his life on the island through a kiss. This was it. She remembered. She had remembered all of the terrible things that I had done to her family.

'I just remembered,' she breathed.

I didn't run. Let her hit me if she wanted. She deserved the satisfaction.

She didn't hit me. She bit her lip, guiltily. 'You could really get into trouble doing this. You're tutoring my daughter… I'm so sorry. I crossed the line.'

I had to admit to myself, I was relieved. Maybe Danielle Rousseau just wasn't meant to remember the horrible life I left her with.

I shook my head. 'That doesn't matter.'

She frowned. 'But, your job…'

'I don't think Principal Reynolds would believe it in his interest to hold the personal lives of any of his staff up to much scrutiny, least of all me.'

There was that hopeful smile again. 'So, you will come for lunch?'

I managed a faint smile in return. 'Yes. I think I shall.'


	2. Chapter 2

Two

-x-

I went home, and found my father at least a decade younger than he'd been when I'd seen him last. If he'd become aware, he certainly wasn't letting on to me, but for some time now he'd been mentioning that his health felt better than it had, and I'd begun to notice that he seemed to be regressing to the age he'd been when he'd died… when I'd murdered him. What a family.

He was sitting in his chair, his eyes shut. I hoped, as I hoped every time that I saw him, that he hadn't remembered.

'Are you all right, Dad?'

He nodded. 'You were gone a long time.'

'I'm sorry,' I replied, and meant those words more than I hoped he'd ever know. 'How do you feel today?'

'Better,' he told me, 'but kind of… sleepy.'

'Maybe you should go to bed,' I said. 'I'm just about to turn in, myself.'

'Perhaps,' he replied. 'Good night, Ben.'

'Good bye, Dad.'

I went to bed, and dreamed of my mother, and when I got up again, he was gone. Maybe my mother had come in the night, and shown him the truth, and they'd moved on together, there and then. Maybe that was never really my father. Maybe the real Roger Linus never came to this place, and the ailing old man I'd cared for here had just been my way of dealing with the guilt of my Patricide. Who can say? If it was really him, I'm glad he just drifted away. I'm glad he never had to wail into a coffee cup in a full cafeteria over the truth, as I did.

I went out, and wandered. I found myself in front of the church again, and so I sat down once more, watching the doors. After a while, I became aware of somebody behind me. I turned my head. Miles Straume was standing about a hundred feet away. He didn't look at the church at all – it was me he'd been watching. He locked eyes with me and shook his head, disapprovingly.

'What?' I called. 'I can't help but notice, Miles, that you haven't gone in either…'

'Thought you always had a plan, Linus,' he retorted.

'Don't worry about me, Miles, just go on in. Your friend James is already in there. I just need to…'

But Straume was already walking away. 'You got a visitor,' he called over his shoulder.

I turned back to face the church and saw what Sturm had meant. A ten year old boy in shorts and a TShirt leaned against the church's wall, his arms folded, his gaze set on me.

I cast my eyes down. 'How can I help you, Walt?'

'Do you really have to ask?' Walt pushed himself away from the wall and approached me, trying and failing to get me to look him in the eye. 'It upsets you to see me like this. Doesn't it?'

I nodded.

'Sorry,' he replied, his voice suddenly much deeper and richer. 'Is this better?'

I looked up. Walt was now a tall, handsome man in his late 30s. Seeing him even as an adult brought back memories of the kidnapping that I had conspired in, and the subsequent tormenting of the boy's poor father, but the memories were not as vivid.

'I thought it would help my Dad out if he saw me as a kid,' Walt explained, 'but I have to find him first.'

'I haven't seen him,' I admitted. 'I can't promise that he came here at all…'

'I think he did,' Walt replied. 'I think this is the logical place for him to go to after you helped him get away from the island…'

I recalled those many years spent chasing the whispers around the jungle. '_Hugo_ helped all those lost souls move on from the island,' I corrected him.

'Both of you did.' Walt was clearly in no mood to argue.

'Well, it was the least I could do,' I conceded, 'considering.'

'If you see him, do you think you could help him again? He deserves to be in there, with the others.'

I nodded in agreement. 'He just doesn't believe that he does. I remember how much encouragement it took him to move on from the island. He was a very stubborn ghost.'

'You were always very good at persuading him to do things,' Walt replied.

I nodded again. 'Could you please do me a favour, Walt?'

'Sure.'

'If you meet your father before I have chance, will you please tell him how sorry I am, for everything that I did to him.'

'I think he knows you're sorry,' said Walt. 'I sure do. Haven't you apologised enough?'

'No. Not nearly enough. Not anywhere near.'

Walt nodded, and turned to go. 'Oh,' he added. 'One more thing. Charles Widmore's looking for you.'

And with that, he became a child again and ran off down the street, calling for his father as he went.

Walt's final message filled me with the same cold panic that I'd felt when that car had pulled up the night before. I desperately didn't want to be out in the open any more. I wanted to be somewhere private – somewhere safe. From the church, a bell began to chime twelve. The lunch date. I hurried to the Rousseau residence.

-x-

It turns out that you sweat in the afterlife. I do, anyway. All of those annoying, disgusting bodily functions and bodily needs carry on as normal – at least, it does in this particular stage of post-death consciousness. This has its up sides – it means that the pleasure of a good, hot cup of coffee and a candy bar can be a comfort after receiving the mother of bad news bulletins, and it means that an unexpected, passionate kiss in an alley can be very pleasant indeed, and give you a giddy thrill when wondering whether the woman you're due to meet might kiss you again. I've never counted sweat as an up side to anything. To be honest, it was one of the handful of things I really could have done without on the island, and I still could have done without it as I ran towards the house of the woman who had kissed me – the woman who was preparing our date.

I was so concerned about the etiquette of arriving for a date in my current state of ripeness that I didn't notice the young woman slumped on the street, sobbing until I was practically on top of her. I stopped and watched. Her knees were pulled up to her bowed, shaking head, her arms wrapped around her legs. Her black hair hung down over her face and arms. For a moment, I felt my stomach tighten.

'Alex…?'

Her head shifted away from her foetally curled limbs, and two dark, tear-streaked eyes looked up at me. It wasn't Alex. And, as sad as it was to see her so distressed, I'll admit that I felt a pang of joy on seeing that face again. She had been kind to me in life, this woman. Kinder than I had deserved.

'Ilana.' I crouched down in front of her.

'Linus,' she sobbed.

'I take it that you know, then.'

'I saw the statue,' she replied through sobs. 'In a book… I let you down. I let you all down.'

I realised that the last thing she might want to do would be to hold my hand, but tentatively, I took hers anyway. She didn't protest.

'You didn't let us down. The island let _you_ down.'

'I blew myself up!'

'Yes,' I had to concede, 'Yes you did. But do you really think that dynamite would have gone off if the island hadn't been finished with you?'

She stared at me. 'I thought you loved the island.'

'I did. I'm just saying, I'm not sure how much it cared for _us_.'

She let go of my hand and hugged her knees again. 'I can't find him. I have to find him. I let him down…'

'Jacob isn't here,' I told her. 'I don't know where he is, but it isn't in this world.' No one had told me this fact, I just knew it. No one I had spoken to since becoming aware had ever mentioned Jacob. I think it was something that we all just accepted, inside. All of us, it seemed, except for Ilana. Poor Ilana, who had devoted her whole life to Jacob, far more devoutly than I ever managed to. In my life, I had loved my daughter Alex and my friend Hugo, and I had been able to be with both of those people in this world. I truly believe that Jacob might have been the only person that Ilana had ever loved, on top of which, she believed she had failed him. She desperately wanted to find him and make her peace with him. Was it any wonder that she couldn't accept that he wasn't here?

Ilana started crying again, harder even than before. I wasn't sure what I could say, or do. In instances like this, I often find it helpful to ask myself what my friend Hugo would do. I shifted myself around so that I was sitting next to her, and put an arm around her shoulder.

'Ben?'

I hadn't realised quite how close to Danielle Rousseau's house we were sat. We were in full view of the Rousseau's kitchen window. Danielle came out of the house now and approached us. I only had time to mutter "she doesn't know" to Ilana before she stood in front of us both.

'Are you all right?' she asked Ilana.

Ilana just hugged her knees again.

'What's wrong? Ben, do you know this woman?'

The impulse to automatically lie pressed strongly on my mind. You'd think that death would have put a stop to all of that, but unfortunately it hasn't.

'This is Ilana,' I told Danielle. 'She's an old work friend. She just got some very, very bad news and she doesn't know what she's going to do about it.'

Personally, I think I did very well with that one. I mean, it wasn't the full truth per se, but it wasn't technically a lie, either.

'Bad news?' Danielle asked. 'Is there anything we can do to help?'

Ilana shook her head. 'There's nothing you can do to change it.'

'There's nothing anyone can do to change anything that has passed,' I agreed, 'but maybe if we talked about things, you'd see it isn't the disaster you think it is right now.' I looked up at my date. 'I know we had plans, Danielle, but…'

I didn't need to finish the sentence. 'There's enough lunch for the three of us,' she replied. 'Please, Ilana, come in.'

I blinked a little. I thought I had just been asking if she minded me staying on the kerb with Ilana for a while. I helped the still shaky Ilana to her feet.

'Guess what they say about French hospitality's true,' muttered Ilana as we followed Danielle to the house. 'Wait a minute… is that… _The Frenchwoman_?'

She intoned the words "The Frenchwoman" so darkly that I couldn't be under any false illusions that she hadn't heard about what I'd done to Rousseau in life.

'That is Alex's mother, yes.'

'And you're _dating_ her?'

'After a fashion. She's… nice.'

'Dating The Frenchwoman.' Ilana stared at me. 'No wonder you don't want her to remember.'

Danielle opened the door for both of us. 'Please,' she smiled, ushering us both inside. 'Make yourselves comfortable in the sitting room. I have a few things to finish in the kitchen.'

Once Danielle had left, I turned back to Ilana. 'She'll remember when she's ready. Like all of us.'

'And when she does…?'

'I'll… cross that bridge when I come to it.'

'Don't you have a plan? I thought you always have a plan.'

'I gave up trying to make those some time ago, Ilana. I'd have expected you to understand that. My plans weren't working out so well for me when we knew each other on the island, remember?'

Ilana looked down, remembering. 'Mine didn't work out too well, either.'

'You do know that we were able to stop the monster, don't you?'

Ilana shook her head. 'You're the first person I've spoken to who remembers the island. At least, the first who's talked to me about it.' Her expression brightened a little. 'So, you _were_ able to blow up the plane after all?'

'We didn't need to. He was made mortal trying to destroy the island. He died. Hoist by his own petard. I know what that feels like.'

'You and me both,' she replied with a faint, self-deprecating smile.

'A lot of good people escaped on that plane we'd have blown up,' I added. 'Including Richard Alpert – he finally got to live a normal life.'

Ilana's smile grew. 'He deserved it.'

'Want to know who Jacob's long term replacement ended up being?' I didn't wait for her to reply. 'Hugo Reyes.'

Ilana's expression glowed with approval.

'I saved his life before the monster was destroyed,' I continued. 'I helped him save the island, and then I stayed with him until the day I died. We did a lot of good together.'

'You turned a corner. Good for you.'

'I'm not sure I'd have done it if it weren't for you,' I replied. 'You offered me that first hope that I could redeem myself – that I could become somebody who didn't sicken myself any more – that I could get back the one thing that had ever really mattered to me… to be with somebody that I loved. I don't know for certain what I'd have done without that hope, but I can make an educated guess, and it doesn't involve helping Hugo Reyes. I wish that there were something more concrete I could give you, Ilana, but as far as I'm concerned, you didn't let _me_ down. And you didn't let the island down either.'

I paused, watching her.

'That's all I've got. Would you still like to stay for lunch?'

She shook her head, absently.

'Are you going to go to the church?'

She thought about this. 'Not yet. But I think… maybe later.' She gave me a small, businesslike smile. 'Thank you for stopping to talk. It was very helpful. When I go, will I see you there?'

'I don't know yet.'

She nodded. 'Thank you.'

'Thank _you_.'

She let herself out of the Rousseaus' small house, and walked away.

Danielle came out of the kitchen with a bowl of potato salad just as the door shut behind Ilana. 'She's leaving, already?'

'We had a little talk,' I replied. 'I think she's feeling much better about things now.'

Danielle set down the bowl. 'You helped her?'

'I hope so.'

'You help so many people.'

'I try.'

Don't be fooled into mistaking my replies for false modesty, by the way. People eulogising about my humanitarian efforts made me nervous even before I remembered what I used to be. Now, it makes me positively queasy – especially coming from somebody like Danielle Rousseau.

'Well,' added Danielle, going back into the kitchen, 'without wanting to appear uncharitable, I'm glad she's gone. I was looking forward to it being just you and me.'

She came back out again with the _piece de resistance_ of the lunch spread and set it down in the centre of the table. I blinked at it a few times.

'You baked a ham.'

My troubled tone unsettled her. 'You're vegetarian,' she hazarded, nervously.

'No.'

'Jewish…?'

I snapped myself out of it. She'd gone to all this effort.

I forced myself to smile. 'No. I'm sorry – I just had a moment of Deja-vu. This all looks delicious.'

I sat down, and allowed her to serve.

'I have that sometimes, too,' she said.

'Beg your pardon?'

'Strong sensations of Deja-vu. I'll admit, I feel it sometimes around you.'

I put my fork down and looked at her.

'There's something about you,' she continued. 'Something very kind, very caring. A real warmth.'

I started eating again. If her memory _was_ returning to her, it was obviously faulty. I was glad. Let her stay that way – she was obviously much happier like this. She had what she needed – all she'd ever needed. She had Alex. Just for a moment, I wondered what my life might have been like had I as a young man stayed with the mother and her baby, and kept them together, protecting them both, but I quickly chased those thoughts away. That wasn't who I was, back then. It would never have worked. Still, it was a good fantasy – to be able to be with Alex as well as this woman, the sunny smile not crushed out of her.

'You're very beautiful.'

Had I said that? Apparently, I had. I meant it, too.

She beamed. 'Thank you. It's been a very long time since a man's said that to me.'

'That's impossible.'

'You're sweet.'

She dabbed at her lips with a napkin. Lucky napkin. I wanted terribly to kiss her right there and then. What does one do, on a date where one eats, when hit by the overwhelming urge to kiss? Having a mouth full of pork was probably a bad start. I swallowed.

'Last night,' I said, 'when we kissed…'

'I'm sorry if I came across as a little forward. I find you very attractive.'

'You're crazy,' I replied with a smile, and then instantly cringed inside, regretting it before it was barely out of my mouth.

She took it with good humour, though. 'Not any more.'

'I'd very much like to kiss you again, Danielle.'

She laughed. 'This isn't an AGM! What do you intend to do – pencil me in to your schedule?'

Sucker for wordplay that I am, I joined in with the banter. 'Just pencil? On our second date? I'd say that was worth writing you in in pen.'

'I bet you have a beautiful pen.'

'It's a steel-nibbed fountain. I've had it for years, but it's never failed me yet.'

I was fairly certain that we weren't talking about stationary any more.

She got up from her chair. I followed her lead. She walked up to me and kissed me again. It was different from how it had been the other night – gentler, but with that same passion, that same promise of so much more. This time, I was much quicker and more confident in kissing back. Our hands were allowed to take their natural course, although she was much bolder in running her palms over the upper half of my body. I'll admit; I chickened out of putting my hands on her breasts. Eventually, she had to grab my wrist and manoeuvre it herself, so that my right palm was resting against the curve of her left breast. That was the moment when my body chose to make its intentions towards her clear. She must have felt it, pressed against one another as we were. I pulled away, embarrassed. That had always been a very private reaction to a comely lady, as far as I was concerned. To impose it upon anybody, let alone press it against a woman's thigh, was in my opinion, as close to the antithesis of gentlemanliness as one could get.

'Sorry.'

'Don't be.' She tugged at my belt, pulling me close again. 'It's been a very, very long time since I've been anywhere near one of those.'

'Danielle?'

'Not since Alex's father died,' she added in a conspiratorial tone. 'And please don't take this as an insult, but I get the feeling it's been too long for you, too.'

Yes. 73 years of life and who-knows-how-long of afterlife is probably too long. I didn't say anything.

'Let's go upstairs,' she whispered.

'Danielle…'

'What? What's wrong?'

I was afraid. That was what was wrong. Besides the worry that something more intimate than just kissing might awaken memories of life in her, she had built me up far too much in her imagination. I was going to be hideously disappointing to her. I decided. It was about time that I told her what I had never told anyone about myself. It was time to continue down the road of honesty, even at the cost of my last shred of dignity.

'I've never…' I tried, 'never had the time or opportunity for… I've never.'

'Never…?'

'I was always too busy with other projects,' I replied, lamely.

She stared at me. 'You must have been _really_ busy.'

I just nodded.

'Do you… _want_ to?'

'God, yes.'

She smiled again. 'Well, then, that makes this very special, doesn't it?'

I wondered whether the right thing to do would be to leave anyway. I wondered whether it would be taking advantage, knowing what I knew that she didn't. But she wanted me. No one had ever wanted me before – not like that. Maybe I've always just wanted to be wanted a little too much.

'I'll be gentle,' she promised with a tone of fond mockery. Then she took my hands and began to lead me upstairs, and I followed.

I'd always held a misconception that, if there were indeed an afterlife, it would be without sex – that sexual urges arose largely from an impulse to procreate, which would not trouble us after we left the mortal realm. It would have been bad news for me if that were true. Maybe there are people in this next world who have left sex behind them. I, on the other hand, found myself in the peculiar situation of finally losing my long-held virginity some time after my death. Smacks of a lurid headline in a tacky magazine, or the title of some trashy novel, but there you go. And for a woman who created an electric torture rack and once shot me in the back with a crossbow bolt, Danielle Rousseau proved a sensual, tender, considerate partner. I can't pretend that I instantly, magically became a regular Casanova that afternoon, but she was a patient tutor. We barely spoke, but she guided my fingers, and later, my mouth, with gentle hands and whispers of encouragement. It's not that I'd never come to climax before during life – I was a virgin, not a robot – but doing so while staring into the eyes of the beautiful woman on top of me was so special, so wonderful… and, after that came something so much more wonderful – not just pleasure, but such pride; the pride I felt as she tautened and gasped and grabbed at my hair, as I felt her body pulse with the strokes of my tongue. It's probably a good thing Danielle Rousseau never seduced me while we were alive. If it were anything like how it was that afternoon, I'd have probably lost my life cheerfully concentrating on what was between her thighs as a Polar bear slowly gnawed me to death.

We held one another afterwards, remaining in silence for a while. After a long time, she spoke.

'I needed that.'

'You're telling me.' I paused. 'I feel like I should get some sort of certificate.'

She laughed, as she checked the time. 'Look at that,' she said. 'Alex will be back soon. We'd better get dressed.'

I nodded, searching the floor for my clothes. 'Do you want me to go?'

'No, Ben. I want you to stay.'

'I want to stay too,' I told her.

And I meant it. It seemed that Limbo was infinitely better than Catholic doctrine had ever portrayed it to be. If this was Purgatory, well frankly, you could keep Paradise. I wanted to stay. And I wanted them to stay with me. I wanted to stay.


	3. Chapter 3

TIME IS AN ILLUSION – LUNCHTIME DOUBLY SO

-x-

Three

-x-

I fell into a routine for the next couple of days of waiting outside the church in the morning to see if anybody else came by, then going to the Rousseau's for lunch. A side effect of the revelation that I was dead, that I'd kidnapped and murdered and lied and cheated and ruined countless lives, was that I had at least remembered that I can cook. Every cloud has a silver lining. Danielle and I cooked for one another, and ate together, and then we would go upstairs together. Judge if you must, but if _you_ had just got your first girlfriend after living 73 years, dying as an elderly virgin and then continuing in the afterlife as a middle aged virgin, I bet you'd be taking every opportunity you could to enjoy the long-withheld pleasures of the flesh as well. Anyway, it wasn't just that. It was her, too. I was glad that it was with her. I enjoyed her touch, and enjoyed touching her. I liked her smile, and her warmth, and her laugh. I wanted to make her happy, and so far, our lunchtime dates seemed to be doing that.

Alex would come home late in the afternoon, by which time we'd be dressed and decent, we'd all have dinner together and then I would go and wait outside the church again, before heading back to my now-empty house. Nobody ever seemed to mention or question that I hadn't been to work at the school for days. I understood that on a subconscious level I had made myself a teacher in order to find Alex – which I had done – and to fulfil a longing that Hugo had instilled in me – a longing to help people. I was sure that a few of the kids at that school were real souls from the island – Alex was, certainly – but most were surely invented by me, or by whoever it was that built this world. The figures that I had seen hesitating about the church were all real, and all in need of help. For now, my time was better spent at the church door than in the classroom.

Danielle was seeing to laundry as I left for the church on the third evening, so it was Alex who saw me to the door. She caught my arm before I left.

'It's OK if you want to stay, you know. I know what's going on, Dr Linus…' she smirked a little, 'although, if you're going to sleep with my mother, I suppose I should call you Ben.'

I blinked down at the ground. This was awkward.

'Alex… I know that on paper this all looks horribly inappropriate, but… but when you get to my age, and you feel a connection with somebody… I mean, over the last few days I've been overwhelmed by your mother's kindness and warmth, and…'

'It's fine,' she smiled. 'Better than fine – Mom's been alone for so long, she deserves someone nice, and I can't think of anybody I'd be more pleased to see her with than you. She's been happier the last few days than I think I've ever seen her. And _I've_ felt happy, too.' She paused. 'Am I laying it on too thick, here? I am, aren't I?'

'Not at all. I'm very glad that I have your approval, Alex.'

She held her smile, but there was an odd, faraway look in her eyes. Not for the first time since I'd remembered the island, I worried that she was remembering it, too.

'I want you to stay. Will you stay?'

Of course I wanted to stay. And, if I could have believed that Alex _had_ just remembered and was asking me anyway, I might have done. I think, in that instance, she'd come close – maybe seen a faint flash in the corner of her mind's eye, as I'd done when receiving the pounding of my afterlife from Desmond Hume. It frightened me. I couldn't bear for her to see the way she'd died. If it was me who was making her begin to remember, I wanted to get some distance from her – just for a while.

'Perhaps some other time,' I replied, turning to go.

'OK. Goodnight, "Dad".'

I froze, staring at her. She stared back, then broke into a nervous laugh.

'Joke,' she said. 'Laying it on too thick again. Sorry. I should just…' she finished her sentence silently by pointing back inside. 'Goodnight.'

'Goodnight, Alex.'

She closed the door and I began to walk to the church. Away from her presence, I allowed myself to dwell on the past – on the childhood that she didn't remember. Just for once, I only let myself remember the good times, and none of the bad. The unbraiding of little pigtails; the brushing of little teeth; helping limbs into little pyjamas. Many thousand "Goodnights". I remembered the stories she'd ask for. At one point, when she'd been six, she'd made me read her Rapunzel so many times that in my boredom with the tale, I'd started breaking away from the text, adding strange new embellishments, much to Alex's delight, culminating in an epic adventure tale spanning a couple of months worth of bedtimes in which Rapunzel broke free, battled ogres, aliens and Vikings and eventually became a Pirate Queen, with the help of a talking unicorn named Clyde and an heroic cameo from the Prima Ballerina Margot Fontayn. I remembered painting with her, drawing with her, teaching her piano. That record that she loved so much, over and over again.

_Welcome to the world of love and laughter, baby…_

Yes, and we always had to be sure not to dance to close to the record player, so that the needle wouldn't jump and scratch the vinyl.

_Welcome to the sunshine of a brand new day…_

Why did they ever do away with vinyl, anyway? The noise of the crackling needle just before the music starts was always such a magical sound.

_You've drifted onto the scene, you flowered into a dream, a dream that never…_

Caught up in my reverie, I had barely noted that I was approaching the church, but as I got closer, I was pulled sharply from my daydreams.

There was somebody on my bench.

I walked around the bench until I could see her face. This woman wasn't in a flood of tears as Ilana had been, although she didn't look particularly happy, either. She was glaring at the church door in a silent rage.

'Hello, Ana Lucia.'

Ana Lucia Cortez didn't respond at first – she just kept on staring furiously at the church.

'I don't think the doors have been locked,' I added. 'You can go in any time you like.'

'I can't go in,' she replied, quietly.

'What makes you think that?'

'Because Shannon Rutherford went in there,' replied Ana Lucia, finally meeting my gaze, 'didn't she?'

'Yes, she did,' I conceded. 'But I'm not sure how much that really matters, here.'

'What would you know?'

'I killed John Locke,' I told her. 'Murdered him – it wasn't an accident the way it was for you with Shannon. It was calculated and unprovoked – my only motives were my own jealousy and spite. After I killed him, I strung up his corpse to make it look like he'd committed suicide. And even after remembering all that, and all the other ways that I'd made that man's life a misery before cutting it short, still he was able to forgive me in this world. If he could forgive me that, I'm not sure that there's anything that _can't _be forgiven.'

Ana Lucia stared at me for a moment longer, then got to her feet.

'And why should I believe a word you say, "Henry"?'

She started walking away from me, and the church.

'You know that isn't my name,' I called after her.

'Exactly,' she retorted.

I tried to follow her, but when I turned the corner that she had turned down, she was nowhere to be seen. I returned to linger around the church for a while, but nobody came near again that night. Eventually, I conceded defeat for that session. Perhaps my unsettling conversation with Alex and the vivid memories it had brought forth had affected my persuasive skills temporarily. Half of my mind was still in the past with Alex as it was. I wanted to go to bed, and dream. I went back to my empty house.

I dreamed, and dreamed, and dreamed of a hundred thousand beautiful little moments, and of her laugh and her smile, and of the magical crackle of the needle on the vinyl before the same song started up over and over again. There were nights, when her baby teeth were cutting, that she wouldn't let me set her down in her crib without screaming blue murder. The only way that either of us would be able to get any sleep would be if I brought her into my bed with me. We'd always end up face to face – our foreheads practically touching sometimes, and I'd stay awake after she'd fallen asleep and just watch her. I would always hold her the same way – curled semi-foetally around her, with her next to the wall so that she couldn't fall out, with one hand under her head and the other cradling her side. I tell you this because when I woke up that morning in the afterlife, I was holding my pillow in exactly the same way.

My head still swimming with memories, I returned to the church. I still wasn't sure how I might be able to help Ana Lucia, but I had to try. Ana Lucia wasn't at the church when I arrived, and although I waited outside for hours, neither she nor any other lingerers approached. I was just starting to think about going to lunch when Miles Straume sat down heavily next to me.

'Are you _still_ here, Linus?'

'I could ask the same of you,' I replied. 'What unfinished business could _you_ possibly have to keep you here?'

Miles shook his head, smugly. 'The old turn-the-question-back-onto-the-other-guy trick. A Linus classic. I'd missed those. That's a joke. At literally no point during my life after getting off that damn island did I ever think "know what I miss? Ben Linus and his conversation manipulation techniques".'

'You had a good life, then?'

'I had an awesome life. Which is, since I'm sure you're not gonna answer my question 'til I've answered yours, why I'm still here.'

'I don't understand.'

'James helped me remember,' Miles told me, 'not long before he was due at the church. He knew that there were still a lot of people who weren't ready yet… but the first wave…? People like Jack Shepherd and Desmond Hume – they'd already done so much good work for the island – for all of us. They deserved to be fast tracked instead of waiting around indefinitely for people like you to make your peace with your lives. But, we decided, if Hume was going home to the spirit in the sky, someone else was gonna have to help out the _second _wave. Made sense it should be me. I mean, I did my time on that island, but look what I got out of it – everything I'd gone in for and more. I was able to settle things with Dad, I got away scot free _and_ ended up with the material reward that I'd gone there in the first place for.'

'The diamonds,' I recalled.

He nodded. 'The diamonds – right. Dead people helped me out big time back there. It was only right that I spend a while here helping out as many dead people as I could, in kind. Straight after I'd helped Mom and Dad remember, I sought those diamond guys out especially. Felt like I owed them.' He leaned into me, conspiratorially. 'Did you know they got buried alive?'

I hadn't known that. I sucked through my teeth instinctively.

'I know,' continued Straume. 'I mean, how did _you_ die?'

'Couple of strokes,' I told him. 'Seventy three.'

'Slipped getting into the tub,' he replied, jerking his thumb towards himself. 'Eighty eight. Kinda puts things into perspective, doesn't it?'

'Not really.'

Straume shrugged. 'Anyway, I hope that answers your question. I'm here to lend a helping hand to dead guys. I probably should've done more of that back when I was alive.' He gave me an odd look. 'I know what you're thinking. You're thinking "what made James Ford, the former con man who got off the island OK, turned his life around and lived a full life afterwards, believe that he deserved to be fast tracked along with the martyrs instead of staying to do some more work"? Aren't you?'

As a matter of fact, that hadn't crossed my mind, so I was able to shake my head without any deception.

'His decision wasn't for himself,' continued Miles, unabashed. 'He knew that Juliet Burke would never leave without him, and she'd already sacrificed so much…' He left his sentence open, hanging expectantly over my head.

'About that…'

'Yes…?' There was the trademark Straume Smirk again.

'When you do move on… if you see her, will you tell her how very sorry I am, for everything I did to her. I liked her. I coveted her. I wanted to keep her, and in trying to do so, I destroyed her freedom. I was like a kid trapping a butterfly under a dish until its wings were broken. Tell her I'm sorry.'

Miles' smirk widened into a victorious grin. 'No.'

'Pardon?'

'Do I look like a message boy? Tell her your damn self. Although, that will mean getting up off your ass and going through those doors.'

I sat back. 'I get it, Miles. You're trying to add me to this second wave of yours.'

'Hey, I'm here to help the guys who are still on the cusp of crossing over. And here you are, staring at the big doors…'

'I'm not "on the cusp". I'm nowhere near the cusp, as a matter of fact. I think I still have… unfinished business…'

'"Unfinished business",' repeated Straume, archly. 'So that's what you kids are calling it these days.'

I decided to feign innocence. 'I don't…'

'It's OK,' Miles replied. 'I mean, this is a world of wish fulfilment, right? You wish to work your way back into being Alexandra Rousseau's surrogate father again...'

I nodded, hoping he'd leave it there. 'Right.'

'…to such an extent that you've started banging her Mom,' finished Straume.

Wow. News travelled fast in Limbo.

'It isn't like that…'

'Of course it is,' grinned Straume. 'And I reiterate – it's OK. Dating and sex and love… they all go on in this world. For some of us, they go on a damn sight more than they did in the last one, as a matter of fact – only, most people here are getting together with people they'd already hooked up with in life. But Linus and The Frenchwoman… it's one of the few pieces of decent gossip this world has. Kudos - even when you're trying to be boring, you're still full of surprises.'

'How gratifying to hear that my private life has provided a group of scandal-starved dead souls with something to talk about around the celestial water cooler.'

'I just never thought you had it in you.'

'To tell you the truth, Miles, neither did I. Danielle and I… I have no way of knowing whether there was always a connection there, but how we were in life smothered any sort of attraction, or whether this is all just something I created, to get closer to Alex. If it's the former, that's pretty sad. If it's the latter… well, that's far, far worse, isn't it?'

Miles paused for a moment, looking away, as though distracted. I knew false change-of-subject body language when I saw it.

'Did you know my parents are together again in this place?' he asked. 'Have been since before any of us became aware.'

'As you said,' I replied, 'people who were together in life do keep finding one another again.' I paused. I remembered the Changs from my childhood. 'Good for them.'

'Good for _me_,' said Miles. 'Without wanting to underplay the feelings between them, sometimes I think maybe they got back together for my sake – subconsciously, I mean. Because I wished it. It makes things so much easier for me that I feel I won't have to choose between my Mom and my Dad when we all move on…'

He left the sentence hanging over me again.

'Very subtle,' I replied.

'I'm just saying,' Miles told me, 'you've got nothing to feel bad about over hooking up with Frenchie.'

'She has a name, you know.'

'However,' continued Straume, 'Carrying on the way you've been doing, putting up walls and running away to sit here every night all so that they won't remember…? _That's _something to feel bad about.'

'I don't want to hurt them any more, Miles…'

'You're hurting them right now,' interrupted Straume. 'You come here twice a day because you know there are people that you need to help move on, don't you? But the only people that you have to help aren't gonna come to the church steps, because they're waiting for you at the house that they keep inviting you in to. And if you keep refusing be honest be with them, if you won't show them how they lived and died for fear of losing them again, then they're gonna be stuck here when they deserve to be somewhere else – someplace better. And that would be the biggest tragedy of all, Linus, because your daughter and her mother deserve peace after all they went through, but also because it would mean that, in spite of everything that _you_ went through – in spite of your penance, in spite of you staying on the island, in spite of all the good stuff you and Hurley did together, you still haven't changed. It would mean that you're still the kid trapping butterflies under a dish.'

I had started to feel the knot in my stomach and the hot tears welling up before Straume had even got half way through his speech. I lost my battle with them as he finished, and turned my head away from him.

'Holy crap,' muttered Straume. 'I actually made you cry. That's… a little disturbing.'

'I don't want to be that person any more,' I told him, truthfully. 'But the last time I had this much to lose… well, I lost it. All of it.'

My tears, and the fact that he'd caused them, seemed to have wrong-footed Miles somewhat. His tone softened. 'For what it's worth, I don't think you are that person any more. You just needed a hard shake to get you to do the right thing.'

'Well, consider me shaken.' I blew my nose.

'I don't want to see you on this bench any more,' said Miles, not unkindly. 'Don't worry about those other lingerers – they're my responsibility. Most of them learned the hard way in life not to believe you even if you said the sky was blue and peach cobbler was delicious, anyway. You go back to the Rousseau's. And you stay there, and you help them. All you have to do is to give them the opportunity to remember. It isn't much.' He paused, and put a hand on my shoulder. 'If you love them, let them go.'

Pocketing my handkerchief, I treated him to what I hoped was a withering look, but was probably too red-eyed and anxious to be taken at all seriously.

'It's for the greater good,' added Miles.

I made to stand. 'I'd better leave, then, before you offer me any more tired platitudes.'

Miles patted a farewell on my shoulder as I rose from the bench. 'You love her,' he said, 'don't you?'

'Of course, I love Alex.'

Miles smiled a little. 'Call me presumptuous, but I'd kinda taken that you'd love the girl you'd single-handedly raised as a daughter for sixteen years as a given. I was talking about Frenchie.'

I have to admit – I've never liked it when Miles Straume knows he's right about things. He always has to be so smug about it.

I wasn't sure how or when it had happened – how a connection and an attraction had changed into something more. Maybe it was because our mutual love for Alex created a certain affectionate bond. Maybe it was because Alex subconsciously wished for us to be together. Maybe it was due to feelings that I'd repressed in life. Maybe it was just her kindness, and her smile. But yes, I was falling in love with her for her own sake, not just Alex's. As I say, though, I don't like it when Miles Straume knows he's right.

'Her name is Danielle,' I told him, and walked away.


	4. Chapter 4

Time Is An Illusion – Lunchtime Doubly So

-x-

Four

-x-

I'm sure that, had by some freak time travel event or afterlife placement mishap, I had ever found myself in the presence of Dr Sigmund Freud, he would have seen me as the perfect case study. I can only imagine the thrill he would have taken correlating my sexual frustrations in life with my eagerness to turn to the gun or the knife, let alone linking the fact that I never knew my mother with my murder of my father. And, since Freud was always adamant that there were no accidents – that everything we do has a conscious or subconscious motive, he would have had a field day with what happened that afternoon at Danielle Rousseau's house, just after I had spoken with Miles Straume.

There is a question, you see, about who started singing first, and I'm not sure it will ever be satisfactorily answered, as far as I'm concerned. Freud would tell you in a heartbeat that it was me, but then he'd also tell you that I've always wanted to have sex with my mother, so what does he know?

Lasagne was probably a mistake. Yes, I'll admit that cooking a lasagne might have been a bit of a Freudian Slip. Miles' accusation that I had been hurting Danielle and Alex by refusing to facilitate the return of their memories had left me with a sensation of leaden guilt, so I wanted to cook something a little more special for them. It was only as I was layering the pasta that I'd recalled how much Alex had used to enjoy that particular dinner. "Dad's Lasagne", that's what she'd called it. She'd used to request it on birthdays sometimes, or when I'd been too busy with the island's business to spend much time with her for a while. Could a lasagne, of all things, make my daughter aware of her island life? I didn't know, and although my conversation with Miles had convinced me that she had to know the truth, it still made me anxious to say the least. I was so wrapped up in thinking about this as Danielle and I ate lunch, and as she dished up a hefty portion for Alex to microwave after school that at no point did my thoughts turn to the real reason that Dad's Lasagne turned out to change my relationship with the Rousseaus forever – namely, the amount of washing up that had to be done. Since I'd cooked, Danielle washed, leaving me to dry and put away. There was a sort of organic rhythm to our routine as she passed glasses and plates to me. My hands worked as though on autopilot as my mind drifted back again and again to Alex.

Dad's lasagne nights. That disgusting mango mush she used to make that I'd always pretend was the most delicious dessert I'd ever tasted because it made her smile so proudly. Games of Scrabble and chess. Minor arguments over the rules. Making fun of one another. So much laughter. Playing the piano together – chopsticks and 'Heart & Soul'. Those songs we used to make up about Ethan Rom, and we'd have to sing them really quietly so no one would hear, and she'd always burst into giggles before we'd got more than a few lines in – God, I'd forgotten all about those!

'What's so funny?' asked Danielle, alerting me to the fact that I was grinning like a madman.

I shook my head. 'A silly old joke I only just remembered.'

Danielle smiled, wiping a speck of foam from the tip of her nose. God, but she was beautiful. 'I like it when that happens.'

She went back to the washing, and I took chopping knives and serving spoons from her to dry, and continued to remanisce.

That record, again and again.

_Welcome to the world of love and laughter, baby,_

_Welcome to the sunshine of a brand new day…_

She'd loved it ever since she was tiny – when I'd found the Dharma Initiative's seeming obsession with The Mamas And The Papas as indicated by the music left behind in their old barracks particularly handy, once it became clear that my adopted child didn't share my taste for German and Russian Romanticism.

_You drifted onto the scene,_

_You flowered into a dream,_

_A dream that never will fade away…_

It was easy enough to play by ear on the piano, but Alex always preferred Cass Elliot's interpretation of the song to mine. Besides which, if we played the song on the record player instead of the piano, it left Daddy free to dance with her. I can't imagine that I was the first parent in the world to juggle ruthlessness in the workplace with a more whimsical attitude with my child, although I'm aware that the mental image of me dancing around my kitchen to Mama Cass might be at odds with the one I built up around myself as Charles Widmore's usurper. If you are finding it difficult to picture then just be grateful, as I often am, that her favourite song wasn't 'It's Not Easy Being Green'.

'Living in a world of love and laughter, baby,

We can find the secret to a constant smile…'

It wasn't me who was singing, but Danielle. I blinked across at her, and she beamed as she sang the word "smile".

It was so difficult to say how long we'd all been in this afterlife. However long it had been, Danielle still believed that it had been her who'd raised Alex single handed all those years. Danielle probably knew Alex's favourite song inside and out by this point too. Maybe I'd only started thinking about it because she'd been humming it to herself, or maybe I'd been humming without realising, leading her to pick up the tune. I don't know. Danielle wasn't a strong singer by any stretch of the imagination, but her voice was sweet and happy. There was something about her expression that suggested she wanted me to join in.

I am not the sort of person who gleefully bursts into song, in public, at the drop of a hat. "Shy" is the wrong word. I prefer "reticent". This wasn't the middle of the street or an Alpine mountain-top, however, but a private kitchen, in front of nobody but the late Danielle Rousseau – the woman who, over the past few days hadn't just seen me naked, but who had relieved me of my cherry with considerable gusto. I'd done things with her that I'd convinced myself towards the end of my life that I'd never, ever get to do, and other things that I hadn't even so much as imagined. It had only been the day before that she'd suggested just watching one another as we saw to our own needs. After the show she'd put on for me with an apparently much-loved vibrator named Gérard, I couldn't exactly shy away from fulfilling my part of the deal. I'd asked her to pull my hair and whisper threats in my ear as she watched me. It was amazing. With this in mind, it really didn't seem right to be coy about letting her hear my singing voice. I joined in – quietly at first.

'The music no one can hear,

Will sound for us loud and clear,

To find forever, it takes a while…'

In the kitchen, in that warm, safe environment, with the smell of lasagne and the photos of Alex and the smile of a lovely woman, I began to let my guard down. I let myself fall into the song, and into the happy memories that went with it. I raised my voice as I waited for her to finish scrubbing the lasagne dish.

'It's time to give our love a chance,

The music's going, shall we…'

She passed me the cleaned lasagne dish. Our fingers brushed as I took it from her.

That's when she saw it.

And I saw too – I hadn't been expecting that. I saw her die in the jungle – running from the men sent after me, unprepared for the magnitude of their fire power and terrified for her child. But what we both saw after that was more heartbreaking still – all the memories that I'd been merrily reliving recently; moment after happy moment that she'd believed she'd spent with Alex becoming undone, with me taking her place. The flashes were coming backwards in order – I didn't know why – and we both saw Alex get younger and younger, always with me usurping Danielle's rightful place, until the flashes of life ended with me taking the baby from her. As I blinked back into this world, I noticed that we both still had a hold of the lasagne dish, and that her grip on it was rapidly growing tighter and more desperate.

'No,' she muttered, 'no, no, no…'

I let go of the dish. 'I'm sorry, Danielle.'

She clutched the sopping crockery to herself and backed away from me slowly, shaking her head down at the floor as she went. 'No, no, no, no, no!'

'And I'm sorry that you had to find out like this,' I added, hoping that she'd find something to say other than "no" at some point soon, 'but now that you have…'

She looked up at me, her expression more full of bewilderment and hurt than the hatred and fury I'd been expecting. 'Is this why you're here? Flatter the sad, lonely Madwoman so that you can take her daughter away from her again?'

I'll admit – I was mortified. That hadn't even crossed my mind. 'No! God, no. Danielle, this world put you and Alex together because that's how you were meant to be. That same order made me Alex's teacher. That's all I deserve to be – all I deserve to do, to care for her from a distance. The first time I came to your house, I wasn't even aware of my real life. I came because I was invited, because it was a nice dream for me to be able to go to a loving household and have a home-cooked meal with a sweet student with whom I felt a kinship that I didn't understand, and her beautiful mother. And, even when I was aware, I kept coming for as long as I was invited, because it was still a nice dream to be able to cling to. I confess, yes I did want Alex back in my life. But I'd never take her from you, Danielle, I'd never separate you again. I've made some changes to my outlook since you knew me in life, you see, and… well, I'd love to be able to tell you that I don't want to take Alex from you because I've learned to be selfless, but the truth is, I want you, too. I want to keep living this dream.'

'You don't want me. How could you want me?'

'I don't know how. I don't even know if it should be possible – to fall in love with someone here – after our lives have all been played out, but I think that's what's happened to me, Danielle. I think that's what's happened…' I paused, searching her closed expression. 'But why should you believe a word I say, right?' Still no reply from her – no change to her steely countenance. I nodded, taking a step towards the door. 'I see. I'll go back to the school. If Alex ever needs me, she can find me there. Please make sure she knows that.'

'You're not leaving.' Danielle's tone had been flat – more a statement than a question or a plea.

'I think that would be best,' I replied, 'don't you?' I took another step towards the door. 'It's like I tried to warn you before - I don't deserve you and Alex – not after the things I've done.'

Danielle slammed the lasagne dish down on the work surface. 'That's not our problem!'

'No, Danielle. It's mine. I thought I might be able to overcome it by now. Clearly, I'm not, so…'

'And it's always all about you, isn't it?' yelled Danielle. 'Always other people paying for your mistakes. I spent sixteen years of my life without one of the few things I ever loved because of your selfishness – don't you dare do that to me again!'

'For the last time, I'm not going to take Alex away from you…'

'I wasn't talking about Alex!'

I stared at her from our opposite corners of the kitchen.

Danielle seemed to have collected herself a little better. Her tone softened. 'I don't know if it should be possible either – to fall in love with someone here. But somehow, it must be, because here we are.'

'Here we are,' I echoed, unsure of what else to say.

'Don't get me wrong,' she added, 'I thoroughly despised you when we were alive.'

I nodded in understanding. 'I don't blame you. So did I, sometimes.'

'Alex,' added Danielle. 'They killed her too, didn't they?'

'Yes. Soon after you.'

'There was nothing you could do?'

'There was. I could have surrendered. But, as you say, it was always about me – always making other people pay for my mistakes.'

Danielle sank into a chair, biting back tears. 'She was so young.'

'I know.' Despite wanting to go over and comfort her, I still remained awkwardly at the other side of the kitchen.

'Did you even care?'

'Danielle.' How could she ask that? 'I was raised by a bitter alcoholic who even when I was little, liked to show his lifelong resentment towards me with his fists, the only woman I was ever interested in in life comprehensively spurned my affections and the magical healing island that I'd devoted my life to decided to give me what was very nearly a terminal cancer at 39, but the moment I saw Alex die…? That was the one moment that crushed me – just crushed me.'

'What did you do?'

'Cried a little,' I replied, 'and then I proceeded to kill an awful lot of people.'

'You killed the people who murdered us?' Danielle asked. She didn't sound particularly excited at the prospect of this, but didn't seem to disapprove of it, either.

'Amongst others,' I told her.

She pulled a chair out from the table. 'Sit.'

I did as I was told.

'Tell me everything,' she demanded. 'Everything that happened after I died - everything that you know and I don't.'

'That will take a very long time.'

'We've got as long as we need.'

-x-

So, I told her. I told her about Keamy and the freighter explosion, about moving the island and finding myself exiled, about using Sayid Jarrah to help me with my off-island vengeance spree, about my hunt for Widmore's daughter. Danielle's expression remained impassive in the main, although she seemed to be relieved that I hadn't shot Penelope Hume, and that the gunshot wound I'd inflicted on her innocent husband hadn't been fatal. I continued with my tale, telling her about the Ajira flight and the Smoke Monster's use of Alex and John Locke's forms in order to manipulate me. I told her about Jacob, and that final life I had taken – that of Charles Widmore. After I had finished, she sat back in her chair, contemplating my story.

'You weren't joking when you said you'd killed a lot of people, were you?'

I shook my head.

'I mean – _Jacob_. Wasn't he the closest you people had to a god? I don't even know what the term is for killing a god…'

'Jacob wasn't a god. He was just a man. A very powerful man, but a man, nonetheless. I'm still very sorry about killing him, though.'

'But you killed all those people… for us?'

'No, Danielle. I killed all those people for me.'

'I'm not sure I wouldn't have done the same, if it had been me who'd lived to see Alex die,' admitted Danielle. 'I imagine it wouldn't have been nearly on the same scale as you, but still.'

'You're taking this all remarkably well, I must say,' I noted. 'I expected you to be angrier than this.'

'Yes,' Danielle agreed. 'That is strange. Stranger still is that I have the strongest feeling that I can trust what you say is true – as strong as the instinct I had in life _not_ to trust you.'

'I'm glad,' I told her. 'Because I don't want you to doubt what I said earlier – what I said about the way I feel about you.'

She took my hand. 'Stay with us.'

'I'd love that.' I paused. 'Are you sure you're OK?'

'Of course.'

'I'd hate for you to feel you have to repress any anger. Not just for your sake - I've been on the receiving end of your pent-up rage before…'

'You're quite safe. I must have left my crossbow behind in this life. I could punch you in the kidneys if it would make you feel better, or pull your hair – I know you enjoy that.'

I laughed a little. I hadn't realised how late it was – we must have been talking all afternoon, because it was at that moment that Alex came in from school. I got to my feet, instinctively. There was something wrong about her expression.

'Alex,' Danielle greeted her with a smile. 'We've got some very happy news…' She trailed off, noting the same odd look in Alex's eye that I had. 'What's wrong?'

'I don't know,' Alex replied, focussing on me. 'I thought perhaps you might be able to tell me.'

'What?' I asked.

'Are you in some sort of trouble, Ben?'

'Not that I'm aware of. Why?'

'Some of the guys were saying there'd been a man hanging around outside the school, asking the students questions… asking about you, Ben.'

I exchanged a glance with Danielle. 'Did he approach you?'

Alex shook her head. 'I didn't even see him. But my friend said that this creep had a British accent, and you said that's what the guy who beat you up and ran down that poor disabled guy sounded like, so…'

'You don't have to worry about that man any more, Alex,' I told her. 'He had… issues. He turned himself in. He's gone, now. This must be a different person.'

'So there's _two_ people out to get you, now…'

'Nobody's out to get me,' I soothed. 'Maybe it's somebody from the Insurance company. Maybe the university is finally headhunting me. Nobody's out to get me. But maybe it would be wisest if somebody asking after me didn't know right now that I'm living in sin with my favourite student's mother.'

Alex's expression brightened. 'I'm your favourite? Wait – you're moving in?'

Like I say, I'm a pathological liar. It's in my veins. Maybe I'll never be able to quit lying completely. In my defence in this case, it was meant as a white lie. There was no reason to worry Alex that Charles Widmore was stalking me in the afterlife, to the point of finding my workplace – her school. There was nothing she could do about it. I was still wondering what _I_ could do about it, although one thing was paramount – I'd keep Alex and her mother safe this time. I intended for my feud with Widmore to affect Alex as little as possible this time around. As is my way, I smiled at her and buried the lie beneath a truth.

'Yes. I'll be staying with you.'

Alex beamed, and hugged me. 'For good?'

'I hope so.'

It had been so long since I'd had my arms around her; so long since she'd pressed her head against my shoulder and made me feel needed. As I felt the happy glow that holding her had always brought me, I wondered if it was Alex's day to remember too.

She pulled out of the hug. 'Ben?'

'Yes, Alex?'

'Do I smell lasagne?'

-x-


	5. Chapter 5

Five

-x-

From that afternoon on, it was as though I had always lived there. There was no 'moving in' to be done – we merely agreed that their home was to be shared with me now, and there I was.

Unfortunately, that wasn't the only change to take place following the revelations of that afternoon. Danielle and I stopped having the Relations that I'd grown so fond of. The way I saw it, she still had a lot that she needed to get used to. If I had suddenly realised that I'd lived Danielle Rousseau's life, I sincerely doubt that I'd be eager to have sex with the man who'd stolen my daughter and made my life a misery either.

It wasn't just the sex. A tenseness began to string itself between Danielle and I – about the whole house. At first, I thought that this was because she was worried about Widmore trying to find me. We talked around and around in circles about it for hours on the first morning that I lived with her. No matter how much I would try to persuade her that I wouldn't let him hurt her or Alex again, all Danielle seemed to want to know was what did Widmore want – a question that I couldn't honestly answer.

That afternoon, she announced that she was going out. Clearly, she didn't see Widmore as big enough a threat to keep her barricaded in the house. She told me that she wanted to see this world with her eyes opened to the truth – to find out more about it. It seemed that she, like me, was in no position to move on yet. She, like me, needed to find something and didn't appear to know yet what that something was. She asked me to come out with her. I declined. Miles Straume had told me that my business now was within this house, and so that was where I intended to stay. I sat alone, and worried about Danielle and Alex out there until they came home. When they did come back, I felt not relief, but an increase in the silent tenseness. Neither Danielle nor I slept well that night. We both tossed and turned and thoroughly annoyed one another until morning, when she went out again, leaving me behind. Another day and night passed, much like the previous one. Then, on the third morning, not long after Alex had headed off for school, Danielle put a dirty coffee cup straight on the table's surface, and something inside me snapped.

'Danielle, would it kill you to use a coaster?'

She looked up at me with a feigned blankness. 'It's my house, Ben.'

'Correction - it's _our_ house now, and I'd rather it wasn't turned into a complete sty.'

'Says who?'

'Beg pardon?'

'Who says this is your house now?'

'You did, Danielle! Please don't do this.'

'Do what?'

'Don't make me out as the intruder. You invited me in.'

'It doesn't mean you get to change everything I have to make it your way.'

We could have gone down a far more serious path at that point. We could have started fighting about the meddling I'd done in people's affairs during life, we could have brought up all sorts of valid recriminations from prior to our deaths, but we didn't. Instead, she started ranting about my re-ordering of her books. I'd stacked them all alphabetically in order of the author's surname, not realising that she preferred them ordered by genre and title, although to be fair, so many of her books were out of even that bizarre system that it was nigh-on impossible for me to have noticed a pattern. I replied with my usual flair for charming the fairer sex by belittling her entire taste in literature. How very romantic of me. She countered by heaping scorn on my dress sense. I told her that I hated Johnny Halliday. She threw a coaster at me. I congratulated her for knowing where the coasters actually were. She threw a magazine. It didn't even hit me, but opened up and wafted back onto her feet, annoying her even further. She began loudly swearing at me in French. I reminded her that je parle Français. She told me (en Français) that she knew, because what would the point be in insulting me if I couldn't understand it. My own range of Gallic insults was more limited than Danielle's, but I used a lot of them that morning. I'd known many a heated discussion in the past, but never in French before. It got to a point where we were both nose to nose, with me having run out of derogatory French terms and reverting back into English, and with her holding a raffia mat aloft in what I assume was supposed to be a menacing fashion. Now, I remember well that on this occasion, it was me who initiated the kiss. I just had to. I was all riled up, and she looked so ferocious and so ridiculous and so very lovely. She dropped the placemat and returned the kiss with a fury I'd never before known.

We found the couch and - you'll have to pardon my language here - we fucked.

I use that word because it's the only one I have that can adequately describe just how animal, and how angry the sex we had that day was. It might be a little misleading a word, because that term often suggests to me something much more instant and basic than what actually happened. This particular bout of Angry Sex lasted for over two hours. We had an awful lot of anger to get out. Didn't begin and end on the couch, either. Somehow we found our way upstairs – seriously, don't ask me how or when that happened. I have absolutely no idea. Towards the end, Gérard joined us as a third party. And not in the way that I hope you'd automatically assume. I'd lost my regular virginity to Danielle five days previously – a lost a whole new one that day. I'd settled Tom Friendly's off-island expenses too many times to have any sort of innocence regarding sodomy. I believe that, were I an attractive Mexican rent boy, what I allowed Danielle and Gérard to do would have set them back something in the region of $70. Mind you, that's 2004's prices; who knows what sort of inflation there's been since then.

It took us a while to come down from the whole experience. After Danielle had realised that my hand gestures meant I was ready for my wrists to be untied and the underwear to be unstuffed from my mouth, I was able to speak.

'I think I might have ruined Gérard for you,' I told her, apologetically. 'I assume that there are places where one acquires adult toys in the afterlife – I'll buy you a new one.'

She shook her head. 'I have a feeling I won't be needing him any more. Besides, I think he likes you better.'

'We did bond today,' I admitted. 'I seem to recall destroying your blouse, as well.'

'Two popped buttons and a ripped seam,' she confirmed.

'I'm sorry.'

'It was surprisingly manly of you.'

'And the photographs…?'

She picked up the camera. 'Want to see?'

I shook my head.

'Spoilsport.' She set about deleting them. 'Digital cameras. What will they think of next?'

I lay back as she went through the images, laughing and deleting as she went.

'I feel better,' she said. 'Do you feel better?'

'Much,' I replied. 'I'm glad you're feeling happier, too. Is this going to put an end to your daily sojourns without me?'

'After a fashion.'

'I don't like the sound of that.'

'I still want to go out today, but not without you. I think you should come with me.'

'Danielle…'

Danielle just raised her eyebrows at me.

'You know I don't like you going out.'

'I don't care.'

'And I really don't want to go out myself any more.'

'I don't care about that, either. This is for your own good, Ben.'

'I never trust the phrase "this is for your own good".'

'Probably because whenever you used to say it, you were lying.' She got up, and found a fresh blouse. 'Come on – I'm bringing a picnic.'

'Not before I have a shower,' I told her. 'And please tell me you're going to wash your hands very thoroughly before you even so much as go near a picnic basket.'

'You're one of the most cleanliness obsessed people I ever knew, Benjamin Linus.'

'Well, that's because most of the people you ever knew were French.'

Danielle gave me a dark look. 'Just get in the damn shower.'

-x-

Even as we left the house, I knew where we were headed to, without her having to tell me. We were going to linger where all those lost souls who know that this world is not life, but aren't yet ready to move on to what lies beyond linger. We were going to sit outside the church. The journey to said church seemed to take less time than I remembered it doing before.

'Is this place shrinking?' I asked.

'Maybe,' replied Danielle. 'More and more people are becoming aware, and leaving, it seems. Perhaps this place is only as big as those within it need it to be.'

We walked on in silence for a while longer.

'Are you going to be all right sitting on the ground?' she asked.

'I'll be fine, thank you.'

'I brought a little cushion, just in case. It's all right, nobody need know. If anybody asks we can just say you have hemorrhoids.'

'Seriously, Danielle. Tais-toi.'

Two men were waiting on my bench outside the church as we approached. Danielle smiled and waved. They waved back.

'You didn't tell us we were meeting people,' said I.

'You didn't ask,' she replied. 'I got talking with them yesterday. They said they'd like to see you before they left.'

They got up and walked over to meet us. The first man was Walt Dawson – thankfully middle-aged again. Trailing behind him was his father.

I forced a smile. 'Congratulations, Walt. You finally found him.'

'Had a little help from a guy called Miles,' Walt replied, 'but yeah. I got him.'

I nodded at Michael. 'Hello again.'

'You're not going to apologise again, are you?' said Michael with a faint wince. 'You did that enough already while you and Hurley were helping me move on from the Island.'

'I can't apologise enough,' I replied.

'Well then, please stop trying. That's not what I wanted to meet with you about.'

'All right, Michael. What did you want to discuss?'

'Always so formal.' Danielle was already sitting on the lawn, unpacking the food. 'Come on, gentlemen. Sit. Eat.'

'Sorry,' I said with a shrug. 'I think she might be making up for lost… Frenchness.'

'What's that supposed to mean?' She asked as Michael, Walt and I joined her on the grass.

'The obsession with dining, the laissez-faire attitude,' I replied. 'Look what you've packed – brie, grapes, _pain flute_… why don't you just walk around with a string of onions around your neck and have done with it?'

'Because you don't like onions,' she countered, primly.

Michael gazed at us both with more than a hint of distaste. 'Jesus. Get a room.'

'We _had_ a room, Michael. We left it because you'd asked to see us.'

'It was my idea that we have lunch,' Danielle told me. 'When I met them yesterday they were preparing to leave, but as they told me how Michael had come to be able to do so, it made certain aspects of this world make a lot more sense to me. I thought you'd benefit from hearing it, too.'

'You know why I found it hard to move on from the island,' said Michael.

I nodded. 'You were ashamed. You felt you were The Lando.'

Walt raised his eyebrows. 'We're referencing Star Wars, now?'

'Thirty years as Hugo Reyes' only companion,' I reminded him. 'Yes. We do reference Star Wars now. And as Hugo pointed out to you before, Michael, Lando doesn't end up in the Sarlacc's belly, he ends up dancing badly behind a row of Ewoks.'

'Well, that's what I'm going to do,' replied Michael, 'if by "dancing badly behind a row of Ewoks" you mean "moving on in death with my son and the daughter-in-law I never met". But, as much as Hurley's words helped me get off the island, they weren't enough for me here. I needed something more. When I found myself in this world at first, I hid myself away from everyone. I didn't want to have to deal with their resentment. Especially Libby and Ana Lucia's. They deserved to hate my guts. By the time Miles and Walt found me, Libby had already gone on into the church. How was I supposed to move on in peace and happiness knowing that she was in there? I explained all this to Miles, and he nodded, put me in a car, drove someplace, got out… and then he came back with Ana Lucia Cortez and locked us in the damn car together. I'm not going to repeat the names I called him for pulling that one in front of your ladyfriend, Ben.' Michael munched contemplatively on a grape. 'We had no alternative but to talk. But as we did, I found out the damndest thing – she didn't hate me. She didn't even resent me for what I did. She should have done – by her own admission, she's not exactly the Forgive And Forget type. We talked about all the people we should really hate by rights – I'm not gonna lie to you, Ben, your name certainly cropped up – but we found there was no bitterness there any more.'

'I met her,' I told Michael, 'after we'd both become aware. She didn't seem particularly happy with me.'

'She didn't trust you,' replied Michael, 'and can you blame her? But she didn't resent you, either. I'm betting you just assumed she did because you still kinda resent yourself. That was what Ana Lucia and me worked out in the car.'

'The only grudges we're able to carry from the last world into this are the ones we hold against ourselves,' concluded Danielle.

I stared from Michael to her.

'We were both surprised that I wasn't angry with you about what happened on the island,' Danielle reminded me. 'Now we know why. Think about yourself – you want to stay away from Widmore, but why? Is it because you hate him?'

I blinked to myself. I hadn't thought about that. But no. I didn't hate Charles Widmore. His presence here troubled me no end, but it was with anxiety rather than anger or bitterness. Even recalling Alex's death failed to bring that knot of vengeful wrath to my chest any more. It just filled me with sadness and regret.

'It's just the way this world works, I suppose,' added Walt. 'Recriminations would only hold us back. This place got rid of them for us. I think it wants us to move on.'

'And I think,' said Michael, 'that the time has come for us to do just that.' He began getting up. 'Eating a picnic while Ben Linus and Rousseau flirt with one another, with my son who got more grown up than I ever did is where this world becomes officially too weird for me, and that's even after a pretty crazy couple of days to start with.'

Walt got to his feet as well. 'I hope this was helpful for you.'

'I think it was,' I replied, lost in my thoughts. 'Thank you. And I'm glad you two found one another again.'

'I think we all find the people we need to find here, sooner or later.'

And with that, father and son walked away together. I helped Danielle to pack away the picnic and then we walked back to the house. We didn't say much as we went – I was still mulling over the idea of us all being stripped of our resentment towards one another, left only with that which we have towards ourselves. I wondered what that meant for me.

So caught up was I in my musings that I didn't see the figure standing by the front door of our house until it was too late for any sort of evasion tactics. I came to a halt on the front garden path, staring at the interloper as he nodded at me with a grim, businesslike expression.

'Hello, Benjamin.

I should have known that it was always going to happen – he'd been trying to find me for days in a shrinking world where Danielle and I being an item was quite the gossip about town. He was bound to track me down at the Rousseau household, sooner rather than later. He'd found me. Widmore had found me.


End file.
